Just read that interview myself Starchild. Really excellent stuff in there. Morrison has a great mind. But in an attempt to avoid clutter, usually contain stuff like this in the News and Previews thread. No big deal, but since the comic book forum here is woefully neglected we try not to burden it with too many threads.

Moving to the topic at hand, I am so sad to see Morrison's All-Star Superman end. I really hope that they do the specials that Morrison mentioned in the article.

IGN: Keeping on the topic of the Joker - You've always had a unique take on the Joker going back to Arkham Asylum, where you suggested he has some type of "super-sanity", where he reinvents himself at will. In the prose issue from last year, we saw the latest instance of Joker reinventing himself. Can you describe this latest personality or superego?

Morrison: It's the most devilish, most awful one I can think of. I'm taking a very original story of the Joker, which I'm sure you've read before, which is the old 1930s story. He just brings a kind of level and presence, and I'd like to bring that back. I think recently the more modern Joker that we're used to has become overly familiar, and he doesn't really give us the creepy shudder that the Joker should. So it was really a way to get back to the very original edginess, but at the same time make it a bit more modern. People are used to certain types of energies from horror movies and from all kinds of things, and someone like the Joker should be scarier than all of that. So that's what we wanted to do. Also, we're bringing that sort of Euro kind of creepiness, that kind of heroine addict, David Bowie in Berlin seventies vibe and really stick to that sort of shifting persona to the Joker. He's got that kind of cabaret feel â€“ slightly sleazy and decadent. And I think all these influences make him a lot creepier.

Hector Lima wrote:f you ever felt like a misfit mutant, contacting "Professor" Grant Morrison from the "Punk School for The Gifted Brats" is bliss. You wake up one morning to find his telepathic electronic mail - directly from the 5th dimension - has been transmitted into your frontal lobe. And when you open the text message it's mental gymnastics make your brain change shape as you read. The Scottish superstar writer has been at the center of attentions - again - after the announcement at Comic-Con International in San Diego of his DC two-year exclusive deal, ending his run on Marvel's "New X-Men" with issue 154.

CBR News caught up with Grant Morrison to learn about his possible plans for "Superman," "Captain Marvel Jr." and a detailed report of what went on between him and Marvel President Bill Jemas regarding "Marvel Boy 2." Plus lots of information on all his projects, from a Chaos Magick book to Rock albums; finishing "New X-Men" and the world of mutants; what's next for Frank Quitely; "LeSEXY," "Seaguy," "Vimanarama" and "Indestructible Man"; the movie he's scripting for Dreamworks; how memetic business consultancy works and how to summon him up with Ouija; Celebrity Culture in Comics and more.

[NOTE: minor spoilers for NEW X-MEN readers below.]

HECTOR LIMA: Talk about the best and worst that happened during Comic-Con International in San Diego this year.

GRANT MORRISON: Best was my spotlight panel on the Friday. It's always good to get a chance to talk to readers. Meeting Bizarro in the street with Chris Weston was another high point. Worst was adrenaline crash in the early hours of Saturday morning - hypertension, spewing and belated grief for recent dead animal all crushed into the wee hell hours of Saturday morning in the Marriott. Everything apart from that was fine. I had a great Convention and a great trip to Los Angeles afterwards.

LIMA: What were the main reasons that made you go exclusive with DC for a second time?

MORRISON: DC offered me an unbeatable deal. I have the best creator contract in the business, I like DC's commitment to high quality original work and I'm happy to repay their faith in my new stuff by tackling some of my favorite DC characters...

LIMA: It may be early to ask this, but it must be asked: you and Frank Quitely on "Superman" - yes or no?

MORRISON: I don't know yet. I'd like to do a Superman project of some kind with Frank but we won't be on the regular book. Quitely will be doing We3 until Christmas and then we'll see what happens.

LIMA: Apart from "Superman," what are the company-owned titles you still want to lay your hands on?

MORRISON: I have plans to take a bunch of no-hope, second-string back-catalogue characters and boost them up into the top rank in a series which will completely re-envisage the notion of the "super-hero." News as it happens.

LIMA: Talk about what happened with "Marvel Boy 2" and "Ultimate Fantastic Four?" Would you ever write other Marvel titles like "Ultimates," for example?

MORRISON: "Marvel Boy 2" (and 3 also) has joined... in Project Limbo. "Ultimate Fantastic Four" will probably still appear, but I won't have anything to do with it. I was involved in some of the discussions that went on prior to the release of "The Ultimates" so I feel as though I've contributed my ten cents worth already.

One thing I wanted to do was "Ultimate Kree/Skrull War" (or Kree/Chitauri War...) which would reveal that the original Super-Soldier serum was genetically-engineered by Kree scientists using shapeshifting Skrull/Chitauri Dna. The Kree, hidden on our planet for centuries, were attempting to create a race of genetically-perfect supermen to protect the Earth in the oncoming Kree/Skrull conflict. The Skrull Super-Soldier mix, applied to the not-very-fluid human anatomy, would have also explained why Banner turns green... among other things...

LIMA: You're said to have an interest in Captain Marvel Jr. Could some of the "Marvel Boy 2" concepts appear there?

MORRISON: No, it's a totally new idea. I only re-use concepts if I find a way to wring more juice out of them. The Captain Marvel Jr. thing is a very different kind of character re-invention and doesn't cover any of the ground of the Marvel Boy series. I keep getting weird new ideas for superheroes with fresh and unusual motivations and this is another of them. As for "Marvel Boy 2," there are some parts of the "Marvel Boy 2" series which I may use again - the Kree Book of The Dead issue, "Beyond The Withinfinite," delved into Kree comic book religion in full-on Prog Comics style and had loads of mad ideas which may find their way into something else eventually.

LIMA: Can you comment on the rumours of Marvel President Bill Jemas trying to alter your scripts? This did the rounds as the reason for "Marvel Boy 2" not happening and your departure from the publisher.

MORRISON: Bill didn't ever try to alter anything at any time. He rejected a Frank Quitely X-Men cover once for some unlikely reason, but that's all I can recall. He simply didn't like the fluorescent overtones of what I was doing in "Marvel Boy 2" and asked me if I was prepared to try a different and more down-to-earth approach to the basic idea of angry alien boy trapped on Earth. My original series pitch and scripts were based in a horrible super-security prison called the Cube, home of the most deranged inhuman mutants and motherfuckers on the face of the Earth. Grotesques like Daddy Heart, Alan Satan and the Spider Sisters filled every page and the whole thing was a very fast-paced religious satire in the Marvel Cosmic style.

So I didn't want to do "down to earth" stories in "Marvel Boy." I decided that movies were doing comics so well there was no point in doing comics to look like movies any more. Let's make this stuff really crazy... so that special effects have to keep up with us. I foresaw a new demand for intricate bizarre psychedelic comics and was eager to oblige. Cycles whip and twist faster all the time and pop culture's threshing tentacles are flailing into an ultraviolet magic goth phase for a little while before the lights come on and the kids all look really weird in the sunshine. Time for the comic books to get crazier again, you might think.

However, what I did have for Bill was a TV series outline I'd created for Marvel Entertainment - a low budget, ground-level interpretation of the Marvel Boy idea which I was never too keen on doing in comic form. Bill liked that one and was happy to let me write it. I wasn't sure and vacillated. In the end, contracts never materialized anyway so there was a sense that the project was doomed to fall through the cracks from the start. It went through all kinds of hellish changes over the years. My own personal "Authority."

That's the story.

LIMA: So, "X-men 2." How does it feel to write a comic when it's hitting the screens as a summer blockbuster? It happened to you with "Batman" once.

MORRISON: It's not quite the same. Last time it happened it made me rich enough to buy a house and go round the world twice. "X-Men" does pretty well every month but it's no "Arkham Asylum." Half a million copies sold to date!!!

LIMA: Who killed Emma Frost? Is she dead for good?

MORRISON: She's not dead at all. Nobody dies in "New X-Men," they just... change. But whodunit? That's the big question. Al the clues have been there for years now and it all gets revealed in "New X-Men" #146.

LIMA: Will all your remaining work on "New X-Men" be published? It should be fun to go from "destroying the Marvel Universe" to awakening the DCU.

MORRISON: I think so. "New X-Men" is all written I just finished my last issue - #154 - for Marc Silvestri and actually felt a deep unexpected pang of loss when it was all over. I'll miss the characters, but they're very stressy, soap-opera, high maintenance people and hard to keep up with emotionally. I'm glad I'm moving on to deal with less traumatic energies. I'm sure there are always some who'll disagree, but I'm very proud of the work I was able to achieve with my collaborators on "New X-Men" and the best is yet to come. I'm sure we all see them through different lenses, but feel I captured the spirit of what the X-Men meant to me. It'll be interesting to see where it goes next.

LIMA: How are these different art styles coming together to you in the title?

MORRISON: I'm having a great time working with Phil Jimenez again and Chris Bachalo. And as for Marc Silvestri, he's outdone himself on the "New X-Men" arc we're doing together. It's really the best work I've seen him do in many years and should give Jim Lee on "Batman" a run for his money. After Frank Q's classicism this is a full-on return to the Neal Adams 'romantic' comic book style - all high cheekbones, almond-eyed women and brooding gazes - Silvestri has inspired me to turn in some of my most apocalyptic and bizarre X-Men work. There's a two-page spread in part two which is the sexiest 'let's go to work' drawing of Wolverine and the X-men I've ever seen.

LIMA: Any thoughts on the other rumour regarding Marvel stretching - or "padding"- storylines to keep the push for a TPB format?

MORRISON: It's news to me. In my usual contrary fashion, I've pretty much dispensed with the "story arc" format in favor of an ongoing soap opera style but there are always ways to package the stories as "arcs." My stuff usually clips along at a hysterical pace so I deny all charges of padding. I agree that some of these other books often read like they've been luxuriously upholstered... 12 issues where the only thing that happens is dinner with George Bush and a sprained ankle.

LIMA: Where do you see the "X-Men" going after they achieve the homo-sapiens' acceptance they fight for so much? What's beyond mutants and gender?

MORRISON: In my stories, the mutants no longer need to achieve "acceptance." Humanity is on the verge of extinction and the mutants are preparing to inherit the Earth. I prefer not to use mutation exclusively as a metaphor for race or gender as has been the case in the past, and I'm more interested in the connection between the "hated and feared" mutants and our own "hated and feared" children - the inheritors of the future. For me, the real war, particularly at the moment, is between children and adults and the X-Men dramatizes this eternal clash of new ideas with old traditions.

LIMA: Do you think the title can hold the appeal to teens? The image of the adult comicstore-goer seems stronger today.

MORRISON: If the readers I meet at conventions and stores are anything to go by, the audience is still in its teens and 20s and those are precisely the people who need the X-Men. Idealism is at its most ferocious peak when you're that age, no matter how well disguised behind fashionable cynicism, and I feel it's my job to provide the kind of no-bullshit, inspirational stories which kind adults in previous generations provided for me when I needed it most.

I recently read something online, which said my "New X-Men" stories read as if "written by a bratty, highly imaginative 14 year old..." which actually describes my ideal male or female reader perfectly. I think it was meant to be an insult but I took it to be the highest compliment and proof positive that the angry little inner teen machine which drives my superhero writing is still alive and well and spitting.

LIMA: Talk a little about your "Sleepless Knights" Dreamworks script? Could Spielberg's studio be the place to pitch a "Filth" movie to?

MORRISON: "Sleepless Knights" is a "timeless" techno Hallowe'en fairy tale which is fortunate because business in Hollywood moves slower than hydrogen atoms during the last three seconds before the Heat Death of the Universe. I'm currently on the second draft of the script and it's looking good. Otherwise, I still dream of "The Filth" as a Hollywood weird movie starring Bruce Willis as Greg Feely/Ned Slade and Mickey Rourke as Spartacus Hughes. Walter Mitty meets "The Prisoner" and fucks that frown right off McGoohan's brow.

LIMA: Does your "Corporate Grant" persona go up well on the "Writer Food Chain" to deal with Hollywood? What was made of your "Batman" script from years ago?

MORRISON: "Batman: Year Zero" was only a pitch, not a full screenplay. People liked it but I was completely unknown in Hollywood and unlikely, under any circumstances, to be chosen as the writer of a major studio picture. As soon as "Sleepless Knights" is delivered I'll be on a magical list somewhere, apparently, which will open all kinds of doors for me. I get on well with people in Hollywood and most of my friends live there.

LIMA: Any news on your book projects like "The If," "Pop Mag!c" and the new edition of "Lovely Biscuits?"

MORRISON: "The If" is being written doggedly behind the scenes of other paying projects. It'll probably get finished this year on a beach somewhere if I get lucky.

Parts of "Pop Mag!c" - the sigil stuff that's online and pages of unseen stuff about summoning Jack Kirby gods - will be appearing as several chapters in the "Disinfo Book Of Lies" to be released in October this year.

"Pop Mag!c" is the title for an almost-completed book which expands all of my magical ideas into a combination autobiography/recipe. Pop Mag!c = Mod Mag!c = Mag!c is Meaning + Transcendental Materialism etc. I'm preparing this right now, with the designer and photographer Steve Cook (alternity.com ). There's a rising interest in mag!c at the moment but most of the writing on the subject is very unhelpful and some of it is so utterly misguided that it can only lead potential mag!cians into a thicket of screaming symbolic bullshit that could take years to get out of.

I'm hoping to restore the simplicity of the Bleedin' Obvious to mag!c. I'd like people to read this and say "Oh, now I understand what they were talking about all along!!!''

LIMA: And what are the status of "We3" and "LeSEXY" right now?

MORRISON: "We3" is underway with incredible, groundbreaking Frank Quitely artwork. No-one will be able to do comics the same way again after We3. - check on crackcomicks.com soon for previews as they arrive. It's something new and different. "LeSEXY" - I wrote two episodes, loved them and then had the project rejected by Karen Berger - she felt it was a little too dark and covered areas I'd already dealt with in "The Filth" - which was true to some extent, except "LeSEXY" was much funnier and even crueller... so I figured she has a right to draw the line. Every other idea I've had is fine with Karen so I may rework "LeSEXY" as a TV show, which was how it started originally.

LIMA: How are your Music collaborations coming along? Any release date set?

MORRISON: The ass2ass CD is our priority "must finish" job for this summer and then we're moving straight on to the "Fuckstar" project.

LIMA: You showed how "Invisibles" was a spell to make us see we're part of the same hologram, while "The Filth" was an injection of the worst aspects of life into the reader's mind to inoculate them. How would a third project dealing with similar themes work?

MORRISON: Wait and see. At the moment I'm assembling research material for "Indestructible Man," which is the third part of an informal "hypersigil" trilogy including the "Invisibles" and "The Filth."

LIMA: Have you fully felt the effects of "The Invisibles" spell; was it or "Sandman" the ultimate teen comic phenomena? And will we ultimately see you on a cover, similar to "Flash" #163, screaming "Stop! Don't pass up this issue! My life depends on it!"?

MORRISON: I hope not! I'm still reverberating from the effects of "The Invisibles" spell, It rewrote my life and enveloped me in a shiny, global sci-fi lifestyle I was really only dreaming of when I started writing the book in 1994 ("The Filth" spell was not as much fun to live and work through, as you might imagine from the different style of that book... but the alchemical results to me and the world were worth it... gold from shit all the way...)

I love Neil Gaiman and "Sandman" was a beautifully realized Gothy mythos, but "The Invisibles" remains a unique and living transcendental object which I brought home with me from the 5th Dimension for everyone to play with, so...

LIMA: Do you picture yourself in the morning of 12/22/2012 trading places with "Invisibles" character King Mob again? And do we have to buckle up to become fictional?

MORRISON: I'd like to think so. So far the math is holding up. Time does seem to be accelerating, information storage capacity isIS doubling exponentially. Everyone's getting into mag!c and Gnostic philosophy thanks to "The Matrix," "Harry Potter" and "Lord Of The Rings." The streets are awash with false prophets and dodgy techno-gurus... it sure looks like the Eschaton to me.

Exactly as predicted by experts here at gmWORD Ltd.

LIMA: Speaking of which, how does the "memetic engineering consultancy" work with companies?

MORRISON: Okay... basically I go and I stand up in front of business people, entrepreneurs, CEOs and I tell them how to apply creative, magical thinking to all of their endeavors. It's a kind of magical performance art, intended to wake people up to new possibilities and ways of thinking.

LIMA: Are "Seaguy" and "Indestructible Man" any of the "brought to life comic" projects of yours?

MORRISON: The first 96-page Seaguy book, "Seaguy And The Wasps Of Atlantis," is already written and it's "just" a strange, poignant story of love and loss written by me and drawn by one of the comic industry's finest young artists. "Indestructible Man" is a big, "serious" piece of work which is looking very daunting at the moment and will probably not get written until 2004. Both of those pieces were conceived before I came up with the "living comics" notion as was "Vimanarama!" - an Islamic sci-fi romance for Vertigo. Philip Bond is currently hard at work drawing the pretty pictures.

The "living comic" experiments are currently at the blueprint stage while I develop the "technology,' so I don't expect any of that stuff to appear until late 2004/2005, based on current publishing schedules. "The Filth" was written in 2000/2001, for instance, and is only just wrapping up now. I've written tons of new stuff over the last couple of years and hardly any of it has been seen yet.

LIMA: What do you make of this flood of comic-based movies? Will everyone get tired of them soon?

MORRISON: I think they'll tire of the costumed hero thing soon enough; they always tire of any trend. In fact, I think people will tire of movies altogether very soon as the immersive interactive experience offered by video gaming becomes more sophisticated and involving. I've been doing more and more work in the games field and I'm very excited by the possibilities for radical narrative experiences.

LIMA: If you were starting today as a comic writer what would you be doing? Does the Internet take your time away from writing?

MORRISON: I don't know if I'd be writing comics today. I'd write games. I probably would write comics but only as a hobby... The Internet takes up very little of my time. I have a quick look in the morning before going for a swim and that's about it. There are one or two Web sites I follow to see what's going on with magic, comics and the world and that usually does it - Barbelith, , Ninth Art, Momus...

LIMA: Your work seems pretty intelligible, but yet some readers seem to have problems "getting it." Will this ever end?

MORRISON: I wish I knew. I seem to always have had have this weird reputation as a "difficult" writer when, as far as I can see, my work has been very popular and democratic for a long time. I've remained successful for many years now and seen various comic writer 'generations' come and go, so I must be doing something right - whatever the fuck it is. As you may have heard I left school aged 18 and never went to University so my work is the product of a well-read, well-travelled, well-bent mind but I don't think it's hard to understand at all.

The Architect scene in "Matrix: Reloaded" - that was hard to understand. I kept thinking where was Dane McGowan to say, "EY! What the FUCK are you ON about, Sigmund?"

LIMA: Are comics fitting themselves to these times of new wars, falling empires and Orwellian-esque media?

MORRISON: I think today's comic books are perfect reflections of their times: conservative, unambitious and self-congratulatory. A howling lack of imagination or direction runs through the mainstream, but that's about to change. It's easy to sense the upcoming wave. Reading most comics today is like wearing dad's slippers and smoking his pipe - it's an illicit thrill to be sure but not much of one... look forward to the new generation giving me something to thrill my soul again. I promise to try to do the same in return.

LIMA: You're one of the "rockstar's" of comics. Do you think Celebrity Culture should ever come to Comics?

MORRISON: Why not? People are people and their lives are either interesting or they're boring. They either can or they can't. I know lots of comic book people who are smarter, funnier, sexier, more well-travelled and more erudite talkers than any number of "stars." I'd rather watch Peter Milligan or Seth Fisher or Chris Weston on a talk show than Justin fucking Timberlake. I'd rather be entertained by Mark Millar or Frank Quitely or Tom Peyer or Mark Waid or.... anybody except the mind-numbing Cristal drinking "celebs" on TV.

LIMA: Then has any fan used Chaos Magick to invoke you as an Oracle? Cyber Chaos-Ouija, maybe?

MORRISON: I'm sure some have tried and probably succeeded. I'm sure I could be made to serve as the embodiment of many qualities. The Screw Crazy God of All Masks and No Face. Can be summoned with sexual fluids smeared across a Garibaldi biscuit or a copy of the Woman's Own. Whatever.

When you've made a career of providing fresh new takes on superheroes and balance that with complex- some might say confusing- mature readers series about the facets of life, it would seem that for Grant Morrison, there wouldn't be much too do.

Enter "New X-Men." It's not just every writer who can change the name of one of the industry's flagship series.

With the acclaimed writer at the helm, the Marvel Comics series has gone from being an adventure series about mutants with special powers to an exploration of what it means to be special, what it means to fight for what you believe in and like all Morrison stories, what it means to live. On the eve of his final issues of "New X-Men"- Morrison leaves with #154- the scribe spoke to CBR News about the series and what he plans to do after, dispelling a major rumor.

Morrison's take on the X-Men has been what attracted many- and in some cases, shocked long-time fans- and he explains, simply, how he views the core characters of the series.

"Professor x - the headmaster," explains Morrison. "A man with big ideas which aren't always understood by people who ain't as smart as himself.

"Cyclops - repressed, utterly noble, brutally hard on himself

"Jean Grey - tries so hard to be good she sometimes forgets to be human.

"Logan - dirty zen brawler with heart of gold and a hint of desperate vulnerability."

Each story arc in "New X-Men" acted as vehicles for exploration and even development of these fictional icons and the comparison to the classic Chris Claremont run on "Uncanny X-Men" (he's credited as the man responsible for making X-Men the multi-media juggernaut it is today) may be apt when you look at Morrison's inspirations. "I didn't read much of what came immediately before me apart from some Chris Claremont and Scott Lobdell issues. Chris is the guiding spirit of the X-Men as far as I'm concerned so I tried to be faithful to his essence throughout. Hopefully, whatever dark hoops I've made them jump through, I always try to strengthen the bonds of trust and love and hope, which bind these characters. That's the essential message of the book as far as I see it."

Besides delving into the many perspectives on life, Morrison also seems to create a "cool" character in each of his superhero series- fans saw Batman embrace his abilities and attitude wholeheartedly, which went over well with many "JLA" fans- and in "New X-Men," former foe Emma Frost is the coolest (no pun intended) mutant around. "She's smart, super-sexy and she tends to get the best lines," admits Morrison. "She's also vulnerable and human in a way which the others are not. Emma makes mistakes and acts on impulse all the time, as well as being obviously beautiful, cool and smart, so she often seems more rounded and sympathetic than some of the others who are essentially 'more heroic' and less inclined to gossip, bitchiness and enthusiasm."

"New X-Men" has also been highlighted by a lot of big "revelations," one of the biggest in the recent "New X-Men #146," and while some writers might feverishly wait to see what fans think of these latest twists, Morrison once again defies convention. "I don't pay much attention to the reactions so I probably miss a lot of stuff. The 'revelations' are just corners or angles which haven't been examined before."

This X-Men series may be "new" in a lot of ways, but it also stays true to a common theme of the past: Xavier's goal to find acceptance in the world. Some might say it's about time the Marvel Comics universe got over their problem and to that, Morrison says, comic fans need only look at how much they are "hated and feared." "The theme never goes stale, especially if you read comics. If you're a comics fan, the world will always hate and fear you and the X-Men will always be there to stand at your side. I don't think the world of the X-Men is much like the real world at all, but it represents or stands in for the real world and for me it's more fun to explore things through symbols and metaphor. The world of the X-Men is nothing like our world - it's a science fiction fantasy land, but the emotions of the characters are universal. Their pains and joys and mistakes can be shared by any human being.

"Each of the stories has a different feel which keeps it all fresh for me. 'Riot at Xavier's' was every school story I could think of mashed into one 'comicsclash' in the '2 many DJs' style. 'Murder At The Mansion' was a kind of mutant Columbo murder mystery. 'Assault On Weapon Plus' was a boy's action story with Wolverine and Scott running around blowing things up and being funny. 'Planet X' is my dissolution of the classic X-Men dialectic, and the final arc is a big, biblical future apocalypse epic. Each of these arcs should work like a different drug, each targeting different pats of the brain. I'm hoping readers will go back and read the whole thing at once to see how all the little clues and nuances fit together. I'm very proud of my X-Men graphic mega-novel."

Throughout the stories in "New X-Men," readers have seen the strength of teamwork and personal responsibility to others stressed, with characters failing when they don't embrace those. "The X-Men are more about finding value in a support network and in the power of the above mentioned virtues," explains Morrison. "Individuality leads to nothing but trouble in X-Men."

Now some of you reading this interview will say (yes CBR News knows who you are) that Grant Morrison is obsessed with sex. That too much of his work has sexual themes and overtones. Guess what? Morrison doesn't care if you think that. "I probably am quite obsessed with sex, along with just about every living thing ever except the unicellular organisms of the ponds and our primeval past. I love sex in just about every way. It's one of my more endearingly human traits and, if I'm to be perfectly honest, I think about sex all the time in one way or another. 'Sex Is The Air And The Atmosphere…' as Nick Currie so eloquently observed. But...all I can say is X-Men has always been a comic about relationships between good looking guys and gals so obviously it will tend to feel 'sexy'..the X-Men have always been sexy and especially so since Chris Claremont injected intense doses of raw muck into the book! What do we all think the Dark Phoenix saga was about - chess?"

So how did this sex obsession comment come up in the context of "New X-Men?" It's not the Jean-Scott-Emma love triangle that seems to make readers flare up, it's the fact that Morrison had Beast "admit" he was Dumbledore. "I was trying to talk about the fact that being Dumbledore is just a label. Like 'being' black. or 'being' British. Or 'being' a fan of Madonna. I saw Henry McCoy as an incredibly clever, witty, cultured, well-traveled, experienced, well-read character so I brought out those parts of his personality which seemed to me to fit the profiles of the smartest and most worldly people I know - his sense of humor is dark and oblique. He's obviously quite clearly bipolar and swings between manic excitement and ghastly self-doubt. He has no dark secrets, however, and nothing to hide."

The aforementioned title- from "X-Men" to "New X-Men"- represents the kind of stories Morrison wanted to tell, but not just fresh, "new" tales of everyone's favorite mutants- he wanted you to read about those "freaks," too. "I like to create new characters so yes, there are a few upcoming issues where the X-Men barely appear, but I don't think anyone will notice. I asked for the name of the book to be changed from 'X-Men' to 'New X-Men' during my run for a few reasons, apart from the fact that it made for such a cool flip-over logo. One thing I wanted to do was combine the concepts of the 'X-Men' book with the old 'New Mutants' idea of the Xavier school as a place where teenagers learn to become super-heroes. 'X-Men' + 'New Mutants' = 'New X-Men'.

"Some fans are always responding negatively to something or other, but nothing would get done if we paid attention to all the different and wildly varying opinions of the vocal minority, so I tend not to bother."

As is the case with Grant Morrison, there's a complex reasoning behind his decisions, and he says that the introduction of the uglier mutants was necessary to three dimensionalize the X-world. "[They're] for people who look so bad everyone hates them and for people who look so good everyone hates them ."

Always ready to blaze his own trail, Morrison's also been rejecting the classic super-villain formula in "New X-Men"- his antagonists act out of base emotions and seem to have more Machivellian plans. "The ideas of villains - in the sense of people who get up in the morning with the intention of being cruel to everyone and everything they meet - seemed irrelevant, but I've created a whole bunch of characters like Cassandra Nova, John Sublime and the U-Men, the super-sentinels of the Weapon Plus programme, several new Shi'ar super-guardians, Quentin Quire... all of whom have fit the profile of 'villain' in a given story. Instead of villains plotting in expensive secret lairs, I prefer the idea of situations giving rise to conflict; the fun lies in seeing when people's natural desires bring them into opposition with others.

"I just decided to focus on characters as people rather than heroes or villains so there ended up being no real reason to mine the annals…"

But one character he hasn't focused on a lot is Wolverine, arguably the most popular X-character, and he says the reason some fans might feel the character is underused is because they're so used to seeing him dominate a story. "My approach to Logan was to write him as a Zen master crossed with an alley cat. I figured he'd enjoy brawling, drinking and screwing when he was feeling in a rough-and-tumble mood...and then he'd crawl back to Xavier's to spend months purifying himself in daily meditation and qi-gong. I saw him as being very old and very worldly but still somehow insecure without a memory...a wise old tomcat basically."

But it wouldn't be X-Men without Scott and Logan's relationship, which began as downright unfriendly, developing to one of mutual respect in the eyes of many fans… but Morrison contends that there's still tension between the two and they aren't exactly free of antagonism. "It's the hostility which masks a deep respect and trust. Scott, as an introvert, is completely sensitive to Logan's inner demons while still admiring and coveting Logan's easy manner and social adaptability. Logan as an extravert, is fascinated by Scott's cool glamor and constantly tries to break it down to see what makes it tick."

And Scott Summers, the one stuck between two beautiful and willing women? He has internal problems that Morrison says will be solved. Till they're solved again. "Cyclops' issues will continue for a few months… he will make a definitive decision between Jean and Emma in issue 151...

"And again in issue 154."

Now some might say, being married to Jean Grey wouldn't give you reason for infidelity, but Scott Summers isn't someone who's led the most normal life. Since when did your son come back from the future, older than you and transformed into a cyborg, with his twin trying to kill you and then releasing the mutant version of AIDS on the planet? And let's not mention the ex who began an evil queen. That aside, Morrison boils it all down to real emotions and not some "controversial" shock plotting. "Emma does everything Scott wishes jean would do. Claremont gave me the key when he said Jean is actually much kinkier than Emma, but not as demonstrative. A repressed guy like Scott needs to be brought out of his shell by an extravert. Jean is sensitive and tends to nurse Scott in ways that don't allow him to grow."

This all came to the forefront of "New X-Men" when Jean caught Emma and Scott together in the "Riot At Xavier's" storyline, one that many fans feel upped the ante for all of Morrison's stories, but that doesn't make him feel any more pressured. "I see all the stories as chapters in a bigger tale so I don't like to compare one part of the continuum to the others. It's all one thing. Some segments of the story have been more popular than others at any given time but in the end everything ties together and I'm sure that once even the 'unpopular' arcs are seen to have their place in the tapestry, they'll be looked upon with more fondness."

The Jean/Emma storyline also represented something else for Morrison's tenure on "New X-Men"- he wrapped up plotlines very quickly for an X-book. "I usually like to wrap up a plot thread within a year of it appearing. I made that promise back at the beginning in the x-manifesto. I think the X-Men needs a lot of running subplots but it doesn't satisfy the readership when they're left open and never resolved."

Love triangles, the Phoenix Force, a villain in armor… all these plot elements have been said by some to be rehashes of the Claremont/Byrne years on "Uncanny X-Men," and while Morrison isn't surprised, he has suggestions for anyone feeling that way, also addressing the idea of "continuity." "The comics audience is supposed to turn over every few years. Anyone who's still reading and can remember all this old stuff is likely to be disappointed by repetition and should probably move onto different kinds of comic books - there are only six plots in the world after all and in the X-Men there are probably only three. It's impossible to radically change the franchise - Marvel's licensors get twitchy if Wolverine's hairstyle changes slightly and forcers them to make millions of new slurpeee cups and lunch boxes. When characters become lucrative corporate franchises the pressure is on the company to never, ever change what makes them tick. Be thankful for the miracle of creativity that allows you to see even a very slightly different take on Wolverine or Cyclops or Beast.

"'Continuity' is trying not to screw too much with people's memories of things they once read.

"With Shaw [an X-villain who seemingly demonstrated telepathy] it was my mistake and I apologize. I'd prefer to get it right, but it's the sort of thing I expect my editors to catch if I mess up and if they don't then I guess we're all to blame for being lazy or preoccupied. Monthly comic books are written by mere mortals on a rapid turnover of ideas and deadlines. We all try our best to get everything to hang together, but the Marvel Universe now has forty years worth of heavy continuity - hundreds of thousands of comics dreamed up by dozens of writers and artists, some much better than others. Sometimes a mistake slips through the net, sometimes an old piece of 'crap' continuity gets quietly dumped in favor of a better idea, sometimes it's just not possible to read everything that went before.

"My advice is just to white out the offending dialogue in your comics with correcting fluid and then, using a fine-nibbed lettering pen, write in your own, more pleasing and continuity-appropriate version of the character's words. It will make your comic collection more individual, more continuity-conscious and much more creative and it will also allow you to edit and collaborate with your favorite writers."

The freedom to do what he's wanted is one of the reasons Morrison loved working at Marvel and has nothing but kind words for everyone involved. "The guys at Marvel have been very supportive. My editor Mike Marts is one of the most professional and charming in the business and I was able to do everything I wanted to do with the book. I really can't complain."

So, what's Morrison's favorite X-Men era? Come on True Believer, it's the same as yours! "My favorite period is the Caremont/Byrne run from the early 80s," reveals Morrison. "Chris was a wealth of new characters and fresh situations. His work was sexy, modern and intelligent. Byrne's work captured that spirit perfectly and for a while the pair of them could do no wrong. I didn't read X-Men much at all after 1982, although I quite liked Jim Lee's 'greatest hits' version because it looked nice, but by that time the whole style of the X-Men had become so weird and inbred that it was hard to get involved in the stories."

One can't talk to Grant Morrison these days without asking about why he left Marvel for DC Comics, the company he left for Marvel, and he answers, though it's obvious this is a question he doesn't want to answer again. "When I came to the end of 'New X-Men, I realized that what I most wanted to do was make up some new characters and try out some original books for the emerging bookstore market. Basically, after a long-run on a top five title with critical eyes my every move, with the weight of forty years history on my back, I felt like escaping back into obscurity for a while.

"My plan is to sit in the dark here until I stop shaking and then re-emerge with a sackful of mad new material.

"As I've said before, Marvel aren't really in a position to publish the kind of left-field work I feel drawn to doing, nor are they set up to offer the creator ownership deals which Vertigo has been known for a decade. I could hardly expect Joe and Bill to re-engineer Marvel's entire publishing structure to suit my artistic whims and it soon became clear that small press publishers, for all their enthusiasm and energy, didn't have the kind of budgets that could attract 'a-list' talent I wanted to collaborate with, so quite simply there was nobody around to publish the stuff I wanted to do except for Karen Berger at Vertigo, god bless her and all who sail in her ship. as part of my creator deal, I agreed to write some DC characters I'd been dying to get my hands on for a while and at that point I realized my dance card was bulging.

"I have so much work lined up for the next two years (several Vertigo books, three big DCU projects, the 'Sleepless Knights' script for 'Dreamworks' which is undergoing revision at the moment, a book on magic and a couple of high-profile games projects) that it made sense to accept all the perks of DC's offer of an exclusive. I already know exactly what I'm writing for the next two years and it's either for DC or for sources outside comics so I decided to accept the warm, bosomy security of my old alma mater. The marvel years were exciting and creative but quite turbulent and stressful in a lot of different ways. I feel the need to drift along without worries for a while."

Of course, now one has to ask- is Morrison going to be tackling Superman? Which DC heroes will he deal with? What are those Vertigo projects? Morrison answered some of these questions and left fans guessing on others. " I have three new 'creator' projects already underway and due for release early 2004 - 'creator' meaning that the artist and writer own the damn thing and it's a totally new story, not some old superhero reheat of what your dad was reading while the thought of you boiled in his testes - 'Vimanarama!' with Philip Bond. 'We3' with Frank Quitely and 'Seaguy' with Cameron Stewart will all be out next year. These books all written and I'm already prepping loads more new stuff for next year.

"I'm deep into a massive DC universe project (something completely new, and not the defunct 'hypercrisis' notion) which involves at least seven new series so far. I've written 28 plots in a week of activity and it's been the biggest damburst of creativity I've ever known. Apart from that I can't say anything more about this except that it's probably the last thing anyone will expect.

"I have two other major DCU projects also in the works and well underway. As I say, I've been experiencing an outrageous explosion of fresh ideas since I completed X-Men. I'm so excited about this stuff I wish I could tell you more, but as usual everything will be announced nearer the time.

"After X-Men I'll probably never be heard of again..."

Some fans are asking- is there an X-Men after "New X-Men?" Morrison's said that his final issue on the series can be seen as the end of the X-Men, explains how, and whets the appetites of fans for issue #154 with more comments. "How? In the sense that they all die fighting for freedom, it ends my 40-issue storyline fairly conclusively. The last story is my exploration of the phoenix force and the duties required of those who bear it. Some old familiar locations will be revisited in a strange new way…

Anyone here read Seven Soldiers of Victory- and is it any good? Bearing in mind that I've loved or at least enjoyed most of the stuff this guy's done since Animal Man, but think he's kinda been eating up his own back catalogue in search of ideas the last few years.

I just noticed the other day that my local library's got all four volumes, and I was wondering if it was worth a trip back there to get them out.

LOL whatever. DC is publishing some of the most interesting comics in their history. Do you want to go back to silver age gimmickry? Sorry, but I like modern DC. For every dud and uninteresting character, they have 10 that I find compelling. That's a good ration in my book.

Maybe he means the "original" way of getting artist and writers to work for practically nothing and then merchandising their work without the benefit of the creator. AND THEN, stealing all rights from the creators so they live the rest of their lives as destitute cripples with relatives screaming, "SO YOU CREATED STAR GOLEM. BIG DEAL! STAR GOLEM NEVER PUT NO FOOD ON OUR TABLE, IRA. IF I HEAR STAR GOLEM ONE MORE TIME, I SWEAR I AM GONNA MOVE TO MY SISTERS IN POMPANO. NOW FINISH YOUR OAT MEAL, YOU BLIND OLD FUCK."

burlivesleftnut wrote:Maybe he means the "original" way of getting artist and writers to work for practically nothing and then merchandising their work without the benefit of the creator. AND THEN, stealing all rights from the creators so they live the rest of their lives as destitute cripples with relatives screaming, "SO YOU CREATED STAR GOLEM. BIG DEAL! STAR GOLEM NEVER PUT NO FOOD ON OUR TABLE, IRA. IF I HEAR STAR GOLEM ONE MORE TIME, I SWEAR I AM GONNA MOVE TO MY SISTERS IN POMPANO. NOW FINISH YOUR OAT MEAL, YOU BLIND OLD FUCK."

Needs more GOLDEN AGE superhero archetypes punching the leaders of Axis powers on the front cover of every issue.

Matt Brady wrote:With Final Crisis #7 hitting today, we wanted to check in one more time before the end with Gran Morrison to ask him some lingering questions, and give him a chance to explain some of the trickier aspects of the story to date.

As always, Morrison’s answers were educations in and of themselves, and hey, we know you’re not here to read introductions, so let’s get right to it.

Spoiler warning - there are slight spoilers ahead for the ending of Final Crisis, including the fate of the New Gods.

Haven't read the NEWSARAMA interview, but IGN Comics conducted one as well and it is probably the most fascinating interview I can imagine. Morrison is a force of nature. I will quite literally buy anything that has his name attached to it.

Leckomaniac wrote:Haven't read the NEWSARAMA interview, but IGN Comics conducted one as well and it is probably the most fascinating interview I can imagine. Morrison is a force of nature. I will quite literally buy anything that has his name attached to it.

Dan Phillips & Grant Morrison wrote:IGN Comics: How about the African American Superman/President in Final Crisis #7? It seems like you're having some fun with the idea of Barack Obama as this conglomeration of hero, leader and celebrity.

Morrison: Completely. What I was thinking, because I wrote that obviously last year, was that Obama was getting in in February, and I realized this comic would be out right around that time. I knew it was going to happen. And so Final Crisis #7 has Darkseid defeated, and the good guys have won and everything is bright and optimistic again, I knew that the feeling in America was going to be the same. When Final Crisis started, I wanted to talk about the kind of crushing horror of the George Bush/Tony Blair axis we all had to live through. Final Crisis was my fictional diary of how it felt to live through the early years of the 21st century.

By the end of that, there's this wind-of-change feeling that Obama brings to America and by extension everyone else – as to whether things actually change, we'll see. I wanted to open Final Crisis #7 with that feeling that the weather had changed. And it's the DC Universe, where anything can happen so here's a black President Superman and we're off! I think this guy's a little better looking than Obama, though. I mean, Obama's a fine-looking fella, but I don't think he could fill out that Superman suit. [laughs] This guy is more Muhammad Ali. So we have him, and we also have Beyonce as Wonder Woman. That's Beyonce at the microphone. [laughs]

Dan Phillips & Grant Morrison wrote:IGN Comics: [laughs] Right. Well one of the big questions that everyone is going to be asking is what exactly is the Omega Sanction. In Seven Soldiers, we saw the Omega Sanction transport Mister Miracle to a number of harsh realities until he arrives back seven days later. I could be wrong, but it also seemed like you suggested in Final Crisis #6 that Sonny Sumo might have been sent through time via the Omega Sanction. And of course, there's Bruce, who is sent all the way back to the dawn of man and the last days of Anthro when he's hit. So what is the Omega Sanction, and why does it affect people differently?

Morrison: It fires its victims through time. Originally, it sent people back to different time periods in Earth's past, as seen in 'Forever People', and then I came up with a version of it that actually reroutes the victim through a disorienting succession of different lives, each of which grows more hopeless and more horrible until your soul is dead. Kirby did the bouncing-through-time original and I made up the multiple-corrupted-lives adaptation for the "Mister Miracle" series.

It affects people differently because of the higher levels of cruelty shown by the incarnate Gods in Seven Soldiers and Final Crisis.

I had the strangest dream a couple of weeks ago. Now I know the truth. I was a victim of the Omega Sanction.

Matt Brady wrote:While winding up his final few New X-Men scripts, Grant Morrison is gearing up for a run of DC projects potentially more ambitious than his works at the publisher in the past – at least nine new projects. We spoke with Morrison about a variety of topics, from leaving Marvel to Vimanarama…

P.S. - Vimanarama is Morrison’s first new project to come out under his exclusive contract, a three issue miniseries illustrated by Philip Bond that’s, as DC describes it: “part…romantic comedy, part cosmic odyssey. It takes just two people — a boy and a girl — to accidentally unleash the Vimanas, long-lost inhabitants of mythical Atlantis bent on conquering the world.”

Yeah – reading that, you kinda have a clue where Morrison’s head is at these days. The writer will be finishing up his New X-Men run with #154, due out early next year. After that, it’s all DC, all the time…or at least until his exclusive contract term is up.

Newsarama: Before we get into the new stuff, let’s talk about the move. What went into your decision-making process in signing with DC? Did you feel that you'd said all you could with the X-Men and at Marvel?

Grant Morrison: Pretty much. I’d reached New X-Men #154 which brings to a conclusion the uber-plotline I've been running since issue #114 and I realized it was time to leave. Although I found I had more ideas about where to take the book after the big conclusion, I came to my senses fast and realized I’d said enough; after four years worth of stories, it was time to let someone else freshen up the characters. New X-Men was a very labor intensive book and I was keen to free up some of that time to work on the pile of new stories and characters I’ve been devising with for the last couple of years.

It was time to change my whole style and approach and put the new x-men years behind me, basically.

NRAMA: So, basically, you were already planning to leave New X-Men before the deal came through?

GM: I’d planned to leave New X-Men before DC offered me a deal, yes. They were very quick off the mark once they realized what was happening, however, and they made me an offer I didn't want to refuse.

NRAMA: You mentioned at San Diego that Marvel Boy 2 was never going to come from Marvel. Did that weigh into the decision?

GM: Not really. Marvel Boy 2 had been stalled for a long time and had already gone through a couple of artist changes. In the end, when contracts for even a revised version of Marvel Boy 2 failed to materialize, I didn't really push the issue, preferring to let it fade away.

NRAMA: There are some pretty solid eyewitness reports that [Marvel EIC] Joe Quesada didn't take the news of your exclusivity very well at San Diego. Was your relationship with Marvel breaking down prior to the decision to leave?

GM: Things were fine on New X-Men, and I enjoyed all the challenges of working on the book but otherwise, I felt perhaps that the type of comic writing I was being drawn back towards - i.e. less filmic, less current-affairs inspired, more imaginatively raw material - was clearly unwelcome and probably inappropriate in the light of the currently successful Marvel style. My natural inclination is to distort and push at the edges, and it wasn't long before I felt I’d put in enough long years on the big franchises. I became eager to stretch again, pursue new possibilities and try my hand at some more experimental work. I’ve been paying close attention to the way pop culture is breaking and racing around and particularly to the way in which comics have responded so poorly to these changes.

The rise of the teenage manga audience is very heartening to me, however, and suggests a future for new work which moves away from the storytelling clichés and endlessly recycled images of traditional, mainstream superhero books. The last time I was in a comic store, I smelled a stale, dread-inducing fog of middle-aged smugness from the monthly comics on the racks. With a few exceptions, they seemed old and creepy and out of touch, like relics from some war or other. In crushing contrast, the shelves of beautiful toys, shiny manga and big, sexy euro albums radiated health, youth and vitality. I’m definitely much more interested in what's happening on the fringe where comics cross over with general pop culture and I find myself resonating strongly with the super sci-fi, hyper-realist and fantastic elements which teenagers are absorbing again via comics and via artifacts which owe very little to the weird reiterations of the superhero books. My problem with manga is the slow, ponderous and decompressed nature of so many of the books, so I’m hoping We3 will do something about fixing that - part of what we're attempting to create is a Western-manga fusion cuisine, which combines inspirational elements from eastern and western tastes in visual storytelling and uses them to make something new.

People at DC seem to have a good grasp of how the cycles of history work and they've very open to my suggestions about the more outrageous or outlandish type of material I foresee becoming popular again. Marvel, quite understandably, have been less inclined to take chances with what appears to be a winning formula. Add to that the fact that they're not in a position to offer any effective creator ownership deals yet and you'll see why I accepted dc's generous and forward-thinking offer.

My relationship with Marvel is fine - I had a good long run on New X-Men, I got to do what I wanted and now we all get to see what someone else will do. There’s nothing else I particularly wanted to write or feel that I could write effectively at Marvel right now and so, as ever, I’m going where the weather suits my clothes, which is one of the great perks of the freelance life. I’ll still be enjoying the best of the Marvel books and I’ll still be checking in with Mike Marts, my editor on New X-Men, to proofread the stories for the next nine heart-stopping issues. Everything is under control. The 'split' may have seemed dramatic, thanks to the efforts of the showmen involved, but it was all very tidy and no-one got hurt.

NRAMA: What does this relationship with DC allow you to do that you couldn't before? Honestly, it’s not like you’re grant Morrison, you're GRANT MORRISON. It's safe to say that you have the ear and nearly carte blanche at any publisher already, without being exclusive…

GM: Vertigo has the very best deal in the industry for new and creator-owned work and since none of the writing I’m doing outside comics is affected by the DC deal, there's no real need for me to go anywhere else. I'm working on something like nine new creator comic series so that's likely to take up most of my time for the next year or so. In addition to that, I’ll be tackling several DC characters, so you can see how it might make sense to keep the whole thing in-house. There’s nothing else in the comic book field, which I’d rather do for the next couple of years and the offer, as I say, was fairly unbeatable.

NRAMA: Moving on to your slate - Vimanarama first. You said a little about it at San Diego, but can you expound a little more? What was the seed of this futuristic Islamic love story, and how was it planted?

GM: The seed was planted after 9/11 when i started reading up on Muslim culture in an effort to comprehend the world political and religious situation a little more clearly. Apart from the Sufi mystical fringe, I’d never been interested in Islam at all but I found a rich vein of visionary weirdness I’d never known was there. I began to research the early history of Pakistan which took me back to the fabled and mythical Rama empire, said to exist six thousand years ago. 'vimanas' are the name given to the flying machines of the Rama empire - detailed descriptions of these machines can be found in the Mahabharata and other early Indian epics, as well as in more recent books of 'speculative archaeology' - David Hatcher Childress' Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India & Atlantis is a useful sourcebook - and from these scraps of research material I began to piece together the idea for a story of romance and apocalypse set in a strictly Mohammedan milieu.

Islam frowns on representational art and I’d imagine that, for some sects, comics are possibly the most blasphemous art form imaginable. I just liked the idea of taking all the pomp and high holiness of one of the world's great religions...and turning it into a Jack Kirby comic.

NRAMA: Why science fiction?

GM: Because the world's great religions are very much like sci-fi - filled with divine beings, immense cosmic powers and completely implausible excuses.

The main characters are a suicidal young Shiite boy named Ali, his extended family and the girl they've arranged for him to marry...there's also a group of godlike superbeings called the Ultrahadeen and some monstrous petrochemical bad guys. Atlantis gets raised, gigantic spider-mosques war with cathedral tanks on the green fields of England and the question is finally answered: Islam or Christianity - which is the strongest?

NRAMA: With that you’ve said though, in giving this a science fiction setting - do you feel that religion will continue to be a large social/cultural force in the coming century or so?

GM: I think religion will become more like a supermarket lifestyle choice - like becoming a deadhead or a goth or a yuppie.

NRAMA: This is the first extended work you’ve done with Phil Bond since Kill Your Boyfriend - did you want to work with him first, or did the story come first, and you felt Phil would be the ideal artist for it?

GM: The story came first, followed by the idea of making Phil work harder than he ever has before on depictions of subterranean super-cities and squid-headed celestial heroes.

NRAMA: Vimanarama sounds like a distinct change from The Filth - something more grounded - a love story. Is this reflective in a way, of the cycle of ideas for you? That is, something wide, challenging and expansive, and then something slightly smaller, and more intimate?

GM: Vimanarama is pretty operatic in scale but the focus is on smaller feelings and emotions and on the interactions between humans and the world of the divine beings.

NRAMA: Let’s expand a little on what you said earlier and the ties between the story and Islam…how tightly are the two tied?

GM: It's tied as tightly as its protagonists. Every single character is either Pakistani or a god. The sprawling family structure of this book is the kind of thing I rarely write and the huge cast of babies, grannies, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters provided me with a lot of opportunities for weird comedy. There are devout Muslims in the book and there are couldn't -care-less Muslims so everyone gets a shout. Basically, I did all my research but you won't see much of it in the book. All the concepts are translated, so 'Allah' is referred to in the text as 'god' and 'hajj' as' pilgrimage', for example, in an effort to avoid the stuffy, self-aware 'ethnicity' of using Arabic phrases for 'color.’ The Ultrahadeen are my own creations based on stories of angels in the Qu'ran and earlier pre-Islamic texts, while some hoary old ideas like Atlantis are given a new slap of paint and cast in a distinctly Islamic light but apart from that, I think the story is human enough at its core to mean something to anyone who's ever been a teenager in the grip of immense and ridiculous forces beyond one's control or understanding. Which is surely everybody who gets past 12...

NRAMA: Moving to the other projects you’ve mentioned just briefly. Are We3 and Seaguy included in the exclusivity deal, and will be forthcoming from DC?

GM: Forthcoming ? I'd be surprised if any of these books appear before next year so I guess you'll have to wait for an official announcement from DC about the what, the where and the when, but these are certainly three projects which Karen Berger approved prior to my exclusive deal and I’m wrapping them up right now, so I expect you'll see them soon enough as part of an extensive program of new work.

NRAMA: Can you give some teases of ‘em?

GM: We3 is my new collaboration with Frank Quitely and the story's inspired by some recent nasty military experiments, which is all I’ll say until nearer the release date. We’ve taken advantage of the relative simplicity of the storyline and created new storytelling and visual techniques to make this book look different from anything else. I think it will completely change the way mainstream comics are drawn.

Seaguy is a poignant story of strangeness and loss in a world where all the great conflicts have long ago been fought and won, in a 'Don Quixote' meets 'Yellow Submarine' style, you might say, if you wanted raised eyebrows at a pitch meeting. I realize I’m telling you absolutely nothing, I know, but again, I’m sure dc will have more to say when an official press release appears. I’ve just confirmed my artist on the project and I’m very, very pleased to be working with this brilliant young artist again, this time on a longer piece, and as he hits a new career high on his relentless rise to stardom. Seaguy and the Wasps of Atlantis is another 96 page book , released as three 32 page singles, followed by a trade probably.

NRAMA: You also mentioned at San Diego that you’re looking to do a big DCU project with Frank. When would that come into the mix?

GM: He's working on We3 which will take until December or January and then we'd like to do something new for the DCU.

NRAMA: Since the buzz around Superman started, you've been attached, by default, to a Superman project, with many people assuming that's why you were brought in on an exclusive in DC's view at least. At this point, do you even have an interest in writing Superman?

GM: There are all kinds of things I personally haven't said about superman which I’d still like to have the chance to say, so I wouldn't find it difficult to come up with something. I’ve been talking to Dan Didio about a lot of different possibilities for DCU stuff so I’ll let you know as and when it happens.

NRAMA: Making one last stab, are you doing a Superman project?

GM: I'd love to. We’ll see.

NRAMA: Wrapping things up, is your time on your exclusive contact with DC filled up with the projects mentioned above, or do you have more to pitch?

GM: The first three new projects - Vimanarama! Seaguy and We3 - are underway and I have four more new books on the starting blocks for next year. With those and with a couple of potentially major DC universe projects in negotiation, I expect to stay happily busy for the entire term of my contract. Things are very exciting and I feel more energized than I have in a long time. It’s a bright, sunny day in a globally-warmed Scotland and I’m getting to write everything I want to write - what more could I ask for in my silver jubilee year?

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Timothy Callahan wrote:With the recent release of the "All-Star Superman" Volume 2 hardcover, it seems like a good time to reflect on Grant Morrison's entire Superman saga, looking at how all of his Superman stories fit together, from the beginning of his career through his most recent celebration of the character in "Final Crisis." If we consider every single one of his stories as part of a larger, self-contained continuity -- if we imagine that everything from "Animal Man" through "JLA" and "All-Star Superman" tell the story of a single version of Superman -- then what would that larger story be? Regardless of publication dates, what is Morrison's chronological Superman?

Jeffrey Renaud wrote:Are you working on anything else right now for Vertigo or DC?

I’ve got the Bruce Wayne stuff that I obviously want to get on to. I have to deal with what happened to Bruce because that won’t necessarily be in the “Batman & Robin” book. Although there will be some elements of that. I’m going to do that and there’s a Multiverse book that I’m working on. It will probably take forever because the book is quite difficult to write. I’ve been spending a lot of time on it. I’ve just been doing an Earth Four book, which is the Charlton characters but I’ve decided to write it like “Watchmen.” [laughs] So it’s written backwards and sideways and filled with all kinds of symbolism and because of that it’s taking quite a long time to write. So there will be a Multiverse series coming out but that will be in 2010 or the middle of 2010. And apart from that I’m doing a bunch of work here in Hollywood. That’s why I’ve dialed back the comics a little bit.

And what’s “Joe the Barbarian” about?

I’ve wanted to do one of those Narnia-style worlds in a wardrobe-type stories but I didn’t want to do it until I had the energy and time to do it. It’s about a little kid who has diabetes, which makes you hallucinate if you don’t take your medicines. And something happens to him in his home. The Hollywood pitch is “Home Alone” meets “Lord of the Rings.”

Scott Thill wrote:Morrison: That's the only DC Universe book I'm doing this year. After Final Crisis, I needed a break from the spandex set. So I'm back with Karen Berger at Vertigo doing what I prefer: Creating new books and characters. I've just finished Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye, the second volume in the Seaguy trilogy with artist Cameron Stewart. The first one comes out in April and if you don't buy it, you'll die never knowing!

Wired.com: Well, that won't do.

Morrison: That'll be followed by an eight-issue series that's a new take on the "world in a wardrobe" fantasy story, drawn by Sean Murphy, who's the Next Big Thing in comics, they say. Then there's The New Bible, the final title for the project I'm doing with Camilla D'Errico. And I've been talking on the phone to Rian Hughes about doing a "graphic novel" -- a proper coffee table one -- together. So that's what's next with the comics for the next year or so.

What happened to....

C.O.O.L.

GM: Then in 2005, as part of the second wave of my DC/Vertigo exclusive output, I’ll be releasing a book called C.O.O.L. with Rian Hughes and two other new mini-series with artists TBA. source: ComixFan

War Cop

Jennifer Vineyard wrote:The six-issue miniseries, to be published by Vertigo, is more about our post-9/11 world. “It’s about the atmosphere of war and terror, and making a mythology out of it,” Morrison said. “So it’s about a guy who’s testosterone-enhanced to be the ultimate soldier — guys sniff his sweat, he’s so much the ultimate man. He’s been bred for war, and he wins the war, but now that he’s won the war, he needs a new one. So he starts looking for other enemies. He’s become paranoid and he’s imagining conspiracies.”

Along the way, the soldier teams up with a kid who’s involved in a youth cult called the Inside Outers. Instead of simply wearing name brands, the kids of the not-so-far-off future cut the labels off their clothes and swap it with their own names. “If you like a particular candy, you pin the label on your jacket so your friends know what you’re into,” Morrison explained. “And you put a sticker with your name on it on your candy or your Coke. So for instance, I would be drinking ‘Grant’ not Coke. I would be wearing ‘Grant,’ not Versace.”

With a pumped-up soldier soldier and a beyond-trendy sixteen-year-old helping each other out, “you’ve got a real odd couple,” Morrison said. “And they’re targeted by those who want to exploit that oddness. I don’t want to say more than that just yet, because it’s very high concept and someone might steal it, but together, they find what the new war is.”

Dan Phillips wrote:IGN Comics: Dan DiDio has also stated that he wants to hold off on letting anyone deal with the Multiverse until you get a crack. Do you have immediate plans for dealing with the Multiverse?

Morrison: Not immediate. What I wanted to do was to take a long time to think before I do another superhero book. But as soon as I started to relax I did find myself coming up with stuff. There are a few strands that come out of Superman Beyond with the Captain Adam stuff, or with Overman and Captain Marvel that I'm interested in pursuing. But these damn stories never stop. You know, I can go that way, I can go this way, or I can go in that direction. So yeah, I've started thinking about some Multiverse books, but I'm just kind of doing it on my own time. I don't want to say you'll see them this year or whenever, but I am thinking about that stuff and I reckon we've come up with some concepts strong enough to launch entire lines of books.

Dan Phillips wrote:IGN Comics: In Final Crisis #7, Nix Uotan ushers in the age of the Fifth World. In Final Crisis #6, we hear Metron call the Fifth World "the age of men as gods." The only shot of the New Gods after Nix Uaton's proclamation, however, is of the Kirby designed New Genesis gods. What exactly is the Fifth World, and what's the status of the New God characters?

Morrison: The Fifth World is whatever cool new stuff happens from now on in the DC Universe. I see it as a Mythic Age for the DCU. An age of definitive struggles. There was more I wanted to do with the Kirby stuff, but by the time I got to the end of it, I had been told that nobody wanted to do anything more with the New Gods. So I decided to tuck them safely away on Earth 51. So now we have all the Kirby concepts in one place. Because as I was working through Final Crisis, I realized this was about the death of Darkseid and Orion and it seemed like, with the New Gods, Kirby's story really just should be rested and considered complete long ago in the guy's own books.

I don't think we should go back to what was, if, as far as I've been told nobody really wants to. So I decided to move it all over to a place where maybe we could look at later with Earth 51, which Nix Uotan fixes up conveniently to link back into Countdown continuity for neatness fanatics. I just thought that if the age of the New Gods has passed, then let's put them somewhere where they can be useful in a different way. Let's watch them having to struggle with a new status quo – starting from scratch, inside a universe, like the Greek Gods in Wonder Woman. Behind the scenes of Kamandi's adventures with the remnants of the Earth-0 OMAC corps you could have the New Gods playing out 'Clash of the Titans' dramas. Rebuilding New Genesis in the ruins of Apokolips.

And if we put them on the same Earth as Kamandi and then tie that into some of the other Kirby stuff, then suddenly you have a whole world based on that beautiful mad Kamandi map Kirby drew and that nobody's ever really explored. I feel like there's a potential series in the notion of the New Gods rebuilding their power base by encouraging belief and guiding the rise of civilizations from chaos, like 'Populous'! Building the destiny of a new world from Great Disaster to some kind of utopia, and then you can cut forward to Earth 51 Legion of SuperGods or something like that.

So to me it seemed like fertile ground but it deserved to be away from the main story of DC Earth-0. When we finally see the New Gods [in Final Crisis #7] they're walking away, and that's how I really felt about it by the end. It's time for them to walk away into the mists of myth.

I can't seem to find a specific thread for Final Crisis, so bunging comments here.

I finished Final Crisis at the weekend. Overall, I thought it was a little disappointing. Felt it was quite muddled, confused and uneven. I also hate that the supplementary books aren't just...well...supplementary and are required to make full sense of everything. The central seven issues should standalone by themselves.

I also thought the follow through from Batman RIP and Last Rites didn't quite have the full impact it should have. Not a great use of the tie-in.

Superman farks off somewhere and then returns all angry. Why? Two additional issues explain it. Great.

...at least there shouldn't be any more Crises for a long time now....well a few years anyway.

There is no question that Grant Morrison has written a number of classic runs and that his professional résumé is somewhat staggering, but many superhero fans will point to his tenure on JLA as one of his best. Starting with the “Magnificent Seven” and building outwards as the threat level escalated, it’s everything great about team books and then multiplied by ten. The biggest characters, the biggest villains, and the highest stakes skillfully weaved across a number of fantastic storylines that start and finish strong. Which presents the following problem, one I’m sure that any creator stepping onto an established book would love to have when he steps off---most of the work is stellar and worth mentioning.

The problem with that fact and this particular feature series is that we could be here for weeks going through everything. Morrison’s JLA is overloaded with cool moments, cooler lines, and that ever-present vibe of greatness we’ve come to expect from superhero team books. Name one thing about these kinds of books that you love and this one probably has it. To this day fans are still citing this work as the “model” for the JLA franchise, and it’s over ten years old already.

So what I’ve done here is attempt to break out the best moments and consolidate them by character, and even using this slightly abbreviated format, we’re still talking about a ton of stuff to cover. The reason I think this will ultimately work out lies in one of the many strengths of this particular run---balance. While there are obviously characters that should and do take precedence, all of the characters receive moments to shine and further define just why they’re in a book as unquestionably epic as this run of JLA. If this format works out, it might become an example for how to handle similar runs going forward. Let me know your thoughts on it, and if there’s anything that’s been missed. We’ll get it started with a character everyone is very familiar with and work our way down.

The latest issue of Wizard Magazine has an interview with Grant Morrison, where the Final Crisis writer discusses his next project for DC, tentatively titled The Multiversity. Kirk Warren at The Weekly Crisis read Wizard (so you don’t have to!) and shares some of the details on the project, as well as a great image that references a bad Michael Keaton movie.

Morrison says, “I’m working on books for seven different parallel universes. Each one is a first issue with a complete story and series bible. Each one spotlights the major superhero group of a different alternate reality. And they all link together together as a seven-issue story that reimagines the relationship between the DCU and the Multiverse.”

Two of the Earths that will be featured are Earth-5, home of the Captain Marvel Family, which Morrison envisions as “a line of books with the Marvel Family done in a more traditional, all-ages, All-Star Superman style,” and Earth-4, home of the “original Watchmen,” the Charlton Comics characters who inspired Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ masterpiece. Morrison says he wants to “do the Charlton characters in a story I’d construct as an update on that ludic Watchmen style - if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had pitched the Watchmen now, rooted in a contemporary political landscape but with the actual Charlton characters instead of analogues!”

Lots more at the link, and I daresay if there’s any issue of Wizard Magazine you don’t want to miss, it would be the latest one. And I have to agree with Kirk; attach Frank Quitely to that All-Star Captain Marvel book, stat!

Kirk Warren wrote:In an interview in this week's issue of Wizard, Grant Morrison confirmed he will be writing a new Multiverse-based comic, tentatively (at least, I hope it's tentative) titled, The Multiversity. We'd already known about Morrison's desires to do a Final Crisis followup that explored the Multiverse, but this is the first time we've heard any details on the book, it's tentative release schedule or concrete facts on what Morrison had planned. Hit the jump for some juicy quotes, a rundown of what to expect from The Multiversity and everything else we know so far.

What Is The Multiversity?

The Multiversity is a seven-issue series of one-shots, written by Grant Morrison, that will establish seven different Earths from throughout the Multiverse. These seven issues, while telling separate stories, will link together to reestablish the connection between the DCU and the Multiverse. In Morrison's own words,

I've started a series called The Multiversity, which will pick up a bunch of strands from 52 and Final Crisis. Back when we laid out the return of the Multiverse in 52, I asked if I could establish some of these books as potential ongoing series. We wanted to set up each universe as its own franchise. [...]

So this is my big project for the next year, and I'm working on books for seven different parallel universes. Each one is a first issue with a complete story and series bible. Each one spotlights the major superhero group of a different alternate reality. And they all link together together as a seven-issue story that reimagines the relationship between the DCU and the Multiverse.

All-Star...Captain Marvel?

One title Grant Morrison mentioned with quite some enthusiasm was an Earth-5 book, which most will know is home to the Fawcett Comics characters, most noteably of which includes the Captain Marvel family. To everyone's delight, I'm sure, Morrison has described this Earth and the potential book as "a line of books with the Marvel Family done in a more traditional, all-ages, All-Star Superman style." Yes, he specifically describes it as an All-Star Superman style. Please, please, please let Frank Quitely be attached to the Captain Marvel book. I think I could die happy if that were the case.

Watchmen 2 - Watching Harder

The only other Earth mentioned was the little known Earth-4, home to the Charlton Comics characters, best described as 'the Watchmen Earth' to comic fans. Morrison had all kinds of things to say about this story.

On the reasons behind choosing to do a new Watchmen,

I thought it would be interesting to pick up on that sort of crystalline, self-reflecting storytelling method, so the mad notion I came up with was to do the Charlton characters in a story I'd construct as an update on that ludic Watchmen style - if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had pitched the Watchmen now, rooted in a contemporary political landscape but with the actual Charlton characters instead of analogues!

But, wait, it gets even better. He goes on to talk about several of the characters involved, particularly Dr Manhattan and Rorschach. Dr Manhattan will revert to Captain Atom, but with a twist. This Captain Atom will actually be Captain Adam from Morrison's Final Crisis: Superman Beyond story.

Rorschach will return to being The Question again, but, instead of the black and white, right and wrong viewpoint of Rorschach, Morrison described his Question as someone who's Randian viewpoint had been "shattered through the prisms of his experiences as a crimefighter so that he sees the world through the multicolored lens of Spiral Dynamics."

For those wondering what Spiral Dynamics are, I did a quick Wikipedia search and came up with this brief explaination:

Spiral Dynamics argues that human nature is not fixed: humans are able, when forced by life conditions, to adapt to their environment by constructing new, more complex, conceptual models of the world that allow them to handle the new problems. Each new model includes and transcends all previous models. According to Beck and Cowan, these conceptual models are organized around so-called Memes: systems of core values or collective intelligences, applicable to both individuals and entire cultures.

Basically, we can expect him to be an 'I can haz cheezburger'-meme spouting, 4chan user. Okay, okay, I admit, I might be a little off on my interpretation of Spiral Dynamics. It does sound like an interesting take and very Morrisonian-like in nature, though, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on who you ask.

Like Final Crisis, But On Crack

What will further divide fandom into love/hate groups in regards to Morrison's work is the so-called description of The Multiversity and the Watchmen followup, in particular. Speaking about the murder scene from the Watchmen issue, Morrison described it as such (emphasis mine),

There's a very different kind of murder mystery at the heart and the whole thing can be read backwards, forwards and sideways.

Further describing the book, Morrison was quoted as saying,

It's been fun to do that kind of style but rethink it and try to play a new version of that 'sound' without copying anything directly. We've got 12-panel grids and pages where you're seeing the events leading to a murder, the murder itself and the investigation all happening simultaneously across the same background. I'm right in the middle of that one, so it's fresh in my mind.

His use of the word, 'sound', might bring up bad memories of Superman singing Darkseid to death in Final Crisis, but it's hard not to feel Morrison's enthusiasm for the project throughout the interview. While it does not guarantee a 'Watchmen 2', as I doubt anyone could duplicate that level of work, especially in a single issue, it's hard not to be excited over the prospect of a Morrison written Watchmen.

Answer The Question

It's still a long ways off, but use the words Morrison, Watchmen and All-Star anything to describe a project and I doubt there's anyone not excited on some level. It does raise some interesting questions, though.

The Biggest question is, if two books will be focusing on Watchmen and All Star Captain Marvel, what are the other five about? I assume one will be Earth-51 and the New Gods and I can imagine Morrison returning the Crime Syndicate on Earth-3 (formerly Earth-2) as another easy sell. With Morrison focusing on a Watchmen reimagining, would he also be willing to take a stab at the Marvel Comics analogues of Earth-8 and do a Squadron Supreme-like story? Earth-20 seems like a lock as well, as Morrison has described that Earth as a home for alternate, 'pulp' versions of super-heroes and he even had character designs for a Doc Fate character for Final Crisis that never made it into that book, but were in the sketchbook.

Another question arises with who else is attached to the project. Morrison is writing the books, but there's likely to be some high profile artists attached, especially to something like Watchmen. Frank Quitely is a likely candidate, as he and Morrison collaborate on many things, but I'm sure almost anyone would be willing to jump at the opportunity to work with him on these books. Will Doug Mahnke get the call after his work finishing up Final Crisis? Will JG Jones get a chance to redeem himself after Final Crisis?

There are literally a million thoughts going through my head with regards to the possibilities for these titles, but I want to know what you think. What Earths would you like to see Morrison visit (see here for a list of DC Earths)? What artist would you like to see Morrison work with? What projects are you excited for? Are you excited? Is Morrison trying too hard to be the next Alan Moore or overstepping his boundaries / committing mortal sin by doing a 'sequel' to Watchmen? Let everyone know in the comments below.

Jeffrey Renaud wrote:Sure, it’s over a year away. But with the interweb buzzing about Grant Morrison’s next major project for DC Comics, CBR News rang up the superstar Scottish scribe to talk “Multiversity.”

Always generous with his time, Morrison shared news that the eight-issue miniseries would tell one massive story, but could also potentially lead to multiple new lines of comics.

With the Multiverse now capped at 52 worlds, Morrison chose his six favorite Earths to tell his story, while the seventh and eighth books will focus on the Multiverse as a whole.

To find out which Earths will be explored, which issue is haunted and which cosmic carrot chomping champion will be along for the ride, climb onboard starship Morrison, because we’re taking off now.

CBR: From what little we know about “Multiversity,” it sounds huge.

Grant Morrison: Well, that was the idea with it. The thing is that it’s really far away so there’s not a lot to say just yet. But I know people have been talking, so let’s go.

Are you setting up seven worlds for other creators to play with, or is your long-term plan to write all seven of these books?

The idea was to do seven books that would be #1 issues for seven different teams on seven different Earths. Each of these would be the bible for what could potentially be an entire comic line for each of these Earths. Whether people run with it or not, I don’t know, but we’ve kind of set up these elaborate worlds with very big back-stories and pretty cool characters. I think there’s a chance we might do something.

And I’ve tried to tie it real closely with the DC Universe, with what’s happening there. I’ve think I’ve come up with an unusual relationship between the DCU and the Multiverse itself and it all links backs to things like “52” and a bunch of other things.

So why not 52 one-shots?

That would be crazy. But I’d love to. That would be fantastic if I could do every one of these worlds. A lot of them weren’t devised so some of these were kind of places I came up with. But I can remember during “52,” coming up with the idea to bring the Multiverse back. We were all – that’s me and Greg [Rucka] and Geoff Johns and Mark Waid – going to each do a Multiverse book. Waid was going to do the Shazam world. And Greg was going to do the Earth-4, the kind of Charlton world, and I think Geoff was going to do Earth-2 and I was going to do Earth-10. At the end, it didn’t work out but I really liked the idea so I came back to it and built this story over it.

It’s the type of worlds I came up with and nobody did much with them. So I thought I would focus on them, because I’ve built up huge back-stories for them, and do eight issues. I’d introduce them all and in the eighth issue, I would tell a new big story to link things up in into one big epic. So I hope that’s how it works.

When do you expect “Multiversity” to debut?

This will be coming out in 2010. This will be after the whole “Blackest Night” story. I’ve been working on this way in advance. I have started a lot of the books and I’ve almost finished a couple of them. I really want to do them ahead of time so every little detail is right. I want this to be big. I kind of thought “Final Crisis” would be the big one and then I realized I had to tell this Multiverse one. So this is the real big epic that comes up next.

And it’s eight issues, not seven?

Yeah. I started with seven but I think it’s going to be eight. The plot ties into the number eight in a few interesting ways so I thought I would maybe make eight issues and make the last one a two-parter or something.

Are you working with different artists on every book?

That would be ideal. Hopefully. If you’re going to do a lot of different worlds, I thought it would be neat to get a completely different look for each of them. And give each a different feel for what it might be like.

There are artists that you’re definitely fond of working with. Do you have feelers out yet for a couple of the “Multiversity” books?

Oh yeah, man. I want to work with all my favorites as usual. I haven’t put any asks quite yet. But we’ll probably start to talk to people soon. But I have a wish list.

Will “Multiversity” be DC’s big summer event next year?

It was never planned to be that way but it may well be. It’s getting bigger by the day. It’s something that I think would work that way. The only difference is that this doesn’t involve a lot of the main DC characters. But they could be worked into it. This takes place outside the DC Universe, but is tied to it.

“Superman” and “Action Comics” are doing very well right now without Superman. And Bruce Wayne is nowhere to be found, thanks to you. Maybe some new characters isn’t the worst thing?

I like to think that as well. Also, you can do more with them. You can kill people. You can do real change with characters that don’t have to come back every month. And you can play with a lot of different tones. And that’s what we’re trying to do with “Multiversity.”

Obviously, the Charlton one is done in this really kind of eye-level “Watchmen” style. It’s all connections and self-referential. And then you’ve got the Shazam book, which is called “Thunderworld.” And it’s just a classic Shazam book but it’s done in a way almost like a PIXAR movie or the way we did “All Star Superman.” It captures the spirit of those characters without being nostalgic or out of date. Each of them has got a real different feel to it. And that adds to it. I think that it’s fun to see a different Batman –a Nazi Batman. Or the Black Superman that we had in “Final Crisis.” He’ll be in there, as well, along with Captain Carrot and some other interesting characters.

We know about the Charlton Earth-4 and the Shazam Earth-5, what other Earths will we see?

One is without designation yet. It’s with all of the nineties characters because I really miss those guys, like Connor Hawke. It’s kind of version where they first had Earth-2 and Earth-2 was the older guys from the Golden Age. This is those guys but they’re not the main heroes. There’s a whole younger generation of heroes – kind of media brats almost. There’s a comic about them.

And then there’s the Society of Superheroes, which is the kind of pulp JSA. And that’s Earth-20 with Doc Fate. He’s kind of a Doc Savage-come-Doctor Fate guy who teams with the Mighty Atom, the Immortal Man, Lady Blackhawk and her Blackhawks and Abin Sur, the Green Lantern. It’s all kind of a 1940s retro thing. As I say, it’s a pulp take on superheroes.

There’s Master Man, who is the Nazi Superman. And that’s set on Earth-10. And it’s with some of the characters from “Final Crisis,” like the Overman character. He’s the Superman who was found by the Nazis at the start of the war. And they kind of retro-engineered these rocket technologies to win the war. So he grows up in the society where the Nazis have basically won the war. It’s horrible and he’s too late to fix anything because so many people have died. So he kind of creates this perfect world but he’s in a state of permanent guilt. It’s a big, dark Shakespearean story. And the Freedom Fighters basically come back to destroy the society that he’s created. And does Superman really believe in it enough to fight for it or does he want it destroyed? It’s a big kind of moral story. It’s a Nazi Justice League fighting the Freedom Fighters. There not real Nazis but they’ve grown up in a post-Nazi world. This is based on the Earth-X Nazi world but it wasn’t really worked out so I did my own kind of version of this one with more story potential.

There’s an Earth-Prime comic with Ultraa the Unknown.

And the other one is the “Multiversity” itself, which is a kind of big team book.

Which one is Captain Carrot in? I’m a big fan.

He’s in the Multiversity one.

Will the heroes in DCU proper know what going on in “Multiversity?” Or does this series exist outside regular continuity?

There’s a bit of both. It’s actually all about the connections between the DC Universe and the Multiverse. There’s a big story. There’s a thing that kind of runs through all of the books and it affects the DC Universe, as well but due to the nature of the Multiverse, only these guys can stop it.

And what’s that big thread that runs through all of them?

Each of the Earths has comic books on them with characters from the other Earths. And those come in handy when you have to cooperate and attack against the bad guys of the other Earths. There’s actually a comic book in it that’s haunted and it kills everyone who comes into contact with it, so we actually publish that comic. That’s “Ultraa the Unknown,” the sixth issue.

But not in real life, right?

I hope not. I’d hate to have that on my conscience.

Does capping the number of worlds in the Multiverse make it any easier to handle creatively? Or is it still a massive beast?

I think the ideal way to do it is to create good concepts. It’s the nature of the 52. It’s hard to do 52 books all in one go without making a couple of crappy ones. I think if they build it up over the years and only do the best that they can do, it will work. But in the past, they’ve used it for throwaway scenes in books like “Countdown: Arena” where they needed a bunch of Multiverse characters. You can’t just create characters and then wipe them out instantly without going into the backgrounds and building them up in any way. I thought it would be more effective if each world had its own big bible with a bunch of characters and they all had backgrounds and secret identities and they could all be spun into books of their own. So it’s quite a big undertaking, so I’m starting with the eight books that suited me.

But I hope in the future other people might get to add their own new worlds and build it up into this gigantic place that you go to and play in. They don’t have to be monthly books but they could be. Some people might prefer an Earth-10 Nazi superhero book to their current favorite. Or they may want a Charlton “Watchmen” style of book, if someone could sustain that type of writing. I couldn’t.

Is there a master list of all 52 Multiverse worlds?

Somebody made something up and I’ve seen a few of them online but they’re not entirely filled in so I’ve had to kind of work around that. A lot of them are just old Elseworlds, which I thought wouldn’t fit in, but I guess they have to fit in somewhere.

Last edited by TheButcher on Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:12 am, edited 2 times in total.

Dan Phillips wrote:The man who "killed" Bruce Wayne discusses the new Dark Knight and Boy Wonder along with his plans to create new Gotham-based villains.

May 22, 2009 - When Grant Morrison's name was last featured on a Batman comic book, the world of the Dark Knight was a very different place. For one thing, Bruce Wayne was still an active member of the DC Universe. Wayne's fate, of course, was handled by Morrison himself in the final moments of DC's Final Crisis event. Though many casual fans are under the impression Wayne died, the final moments of Crisis revealed that he was simply trapped in the distant past.

Since that time, the battle for Batman's cowl began, and earlier this week, fans discovered who would become the new Dynamic Duo. The revealed pair – Dick Grayson, formerly Nightwing, and Damian Wayne, the punk child of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul.

With Battle of the Cowl closed, all eyes are now turning back to Morrison as he helms a new series, Batman and Robin, which will become the flagship book of the franchise. Teamed with Frank Quitely for his first three-issue arc, Morrison has plenty of details that he can discuss now that Cowl has concluded. IGN tracked down the infamous writer for plenty of Gotham-related chatter. Read on for his thoughts on the characters, his approach to the series, the artists working alongside him and much, much more.

Jonathan Cape editor Alex Bowler has over-powered rival publishers to buy a book on superheroes by Scottish ­comics "legend" Grant Morrison. Bowler bought EU, UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein on behalf of Peter McGuigan at Foundry.

Bowler described Supergods as "the definitive history of the superhero", from the invention of Superman in 1938, through to the movie versions of "Watchmen" and "Wolverine".

Morrison has been a comics writer for more than 20 years, writing superhero stories for DC Comics and Marvel, and creating the adult comic book series The Invisibles and follow-up The Filth. His comics sold in the region of three million copies in the US alone last year, said Cape, as well as 200,000 copies of his collections and graphic novels. Bowler said that Morrison was "a comics legend and the one person you would want to write this book," calling him "the ultimate comic-book insider, [with] an irrepressible pop-culture mind, and a consummate raconteur."

He also promised Supergods would be a book "like no other", adding: "Our world and the world of the superhero are going to be fed into the brilliant blender of Grant's brain, so expect philosophy, anthropology, Buddhism, mad ­science, capes and punk rock."

Supergods will be published in August 2010.

The US deal has just been confirmed: Supergods will be published by Christopher Jackson at Spiegel & Grau (Doubleday).

Vaneta Rogers wrote:6) Kairos wrote:Will we ever see any of the Grant Morrison "All-Star Superman Specials" that were apparently discussed when All-Star Superman was finished?

DiDio: I don't think so. I mean, what happened was that we wanted to keep the series going, but to be quite honest, the 12 issues that Grant and Frank Quitely had done together was so spectacular, I really didn't a way to follow it up, and I was happy to see them move on to Batman and Robin. Grant has a very full plate between what he has going on with Batman and all the series, not to say that they're off the table, but right now, we're focused on a lot of other big things with Grant.

Nrama: I know Cameron Stewart is on Batman and Robin next, but is it still the plan that Frank Quitely will return to the comic?

DiDio: There's a good chance that he will, but he also has another project with Grant that he's working on as we speak.

Interesting piece, sums things up nicely. I bought all of the Morrison TPs and gave them away. They just didn't resonate with me; nothing about the X-Men has for 20 years other than the Whedon run on Astonishing. But Morrison's run was very good. It ripped holes through the empty spectacle of alternate timelines and Mister Sinister and Apocalypse that so many people seem to think were great - even if Morrison ended his tenure with an alternate timeline. The book would have been helped if Igor Kordey had been able to draw the human body and face. I never understood how Marvel's editors passed Kordey's art. But since Quitely was still having some trouble with faces back then, I guess I shouldn't fault the Croat too much.

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -- Noam Chomsky

David Uzumeri wrote:The #6 annotations are so late partly because the issue seemed rather sparse to me and partly because Gavok over at 4thletter! just completely demolished the landscape of any of my commentary, so what’s below regarding that issue is heavily indebted to his realization about the nature of the story. Then, below, commentary on today’s #7, which is detailed and byzantine and littered with references and basically my wet dream as an annotator.

The idea of pirate subway trains harkens back to Morrison and Stewart’s last DCU collaboration, Seven Soldiers: Guardian, where “All-Beard” Alan Moore and “No-Beard” Grant Morrison battled for control over the NYC subway system.

Kirk Warren wrote:In an interview in this week's issue of Wizard, Grant Morrison confirmed he will be writing a new Multiverse-based comic, tentatively (at least, I hope it's tentative) titled, The Multiversity. We'd already known about Morrison's desires to do a Final Crisis followup that explored the Multiverse, but this is the first time we've heard any details on the book, it's tentative release schedule or concrete facts on what Morrison had planned. Hit the jump for some juicy quotes, a rundown of what to expect from The Multiversity and everything else we know so far.

What Is The Multiversity?

The Multiversity is a seven-issue series of one-shots, written by Grant Morrison, that will establish seven different Earths from throughout the Multiverse. These seven issues, while telling separate stories, will link together to reestablish the connection between the DCU and the Multiverse. In Morrison's own words,

I've started a series called The Multiversity, which will pick up a bunch of strands from 52 and Final Crisis. Back when we laid out the return of the Multiverse in 52, I asked if I could establish some of these books as potential ongoing series. We wanted to set up each universe as its own franchise. [...]

So this is my big project for the next year, and I'm working on books for seven different parallel universes. Each one is a first issue with a complete story and series bible. Each one spotlights the major superhero group of a different alternate reality. And they all link together together as a seven-issue story that reimagines the relationship between the DCU and the Multiverse.

Watchmen 2 - Watching Harder

The only other Earth mentioned was the little known Earth-4, home to the Charlton Comics characters, best described as 'the Watchmen Earth' to comic fans. Morrison had all kinds of things to say about this story.

On the reasons behind choosing to do a new Watchmen,

I thought it would be interesting to pick up on that sort of crystalline, self-reflecting storytelling method, so the mad notion I came up with was to do the Charlton characters in a story I'd construct as an update on that ludic Watchmen style - if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had pitched the Watchmen now, rooted in a contemporary political landscape but with the actual Charlton characters instead of analogues!

But, wait, it gets even better. He goes on to talk about several of the characters involved, particularly Dr Manhattan and Rorschach. Dr Manhattan will revert to Captain Atom, but with a twist. This Captain Atom will actually be Captain Adam from Morrison's Final Crisis: Superman Beyond story.

Rorschach will return to being The Question again, but, instead of the black and white, right and wrong viewpoint of Rorschach, Morrison described his Question as someone who's Randian viewpoint had been "shattered through the prisms of his experiences as a crimefighter so that he sees the world through the multicolored lens of Spiral Dynamics."

For those wondering what Spiral Dynamics are, I did a quick Wikipedia search and came up with this brief explaination:

Spiral Dynamics argues that human nature is not fixed: humans are able, when forced by life conditions, to adapt to their environment by constructing new, more complex, conceptual models of the world that allow them to handle the new problems. Each new model includes and transcends all previous models. According to Beck and Cowan, these conceptual models are organized around so-called Memes: systems of core values or collective intelligences, applicable to both individuals and entire cultures.

Basically, we can expect him to be an 'I can haz cheezburger'-meme spouting, 4chan user. Okay, okay, I admit, I might be a little off on my interpretation of Spiral Dynamics. It does sound like an interesting take and very Morrisonian-like in nature, though, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on who you ask.

Like Final Crisis, But On Crack

What will further divide fandom into love/hate groups in regards to Morrison's work is the so-called description of The Multiversity and the Watchmen followup, in particular. Speaking about the murder scene from the Watchmen issue, Morrison described it as such (emphasis mine),

There's a very different kind of murder mystery at the heart and the whole thing can be read backwards, forwards and sideways.

Further describing the book, Morrison was quoted as saying,

It's been fun to do that kind of style but rethink it and try to play a new version of that 'sound' without copying anything directly. We've got 12-panel grids and pages where you're seeing the events leading to a murder, the murder itself and the investigation all happening simultaneously across the same background. I'm right in the middle of that one, so it's fresh in my mind.

His use of the word, 'sound', might bring up bad memories of Superman singing Darkseid to death in Final Crisis, but it's hard not to feel Morrison's enthusiasm for the project throughout the interview. While it does not guarantee a 'Watchmen 2', as I doubt anyone could duplicate that level of work, especially in a single issue, it's hard not to be excited over the prospect of a Morrison written Watchmen.

It's still a long ways off, but use the words Morrison, Watchmen and All-Star anything to describe a project and I doubt there's anyone not excited on some level. It does raise some interesting questions, though.

Last edited by TheButcher on Tue Oct 26, 2010 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

See, this is interesting. Because I vented about the WATCHMEN sequel stuff when I posted it in the Alan Moore thread. However, something like this strikes me as entirely different. Letting Morrison tackle the Charlton characters and riff off of WATCHMEN for an issue doesn't sound too bad. It will certainly continue all of that "Morrison vs. Moore" chatter that Butcher linked to elsewhere. But something like this is not what i worry about from DC...it is taking the characters and the universe and doing prequels, sequels, etc. trying to cash in on the success of the film/graphic novel.

On the other hand, I am not sure that the 12 panel thing is really necessary. Why not take the characters, go with the premise of updating it to contemporary political issues and go from there. No need to DIRECTLY draw the parallel.

you know, people talk about the movie industry having no originality and accuse it of just reusing and rehashing the same movies/ideas over and over.....but can they even compare to the comic industry on that plane? how many different versions of Hulk ARE there, for instance. there are the "regular" superheroes, then there are the Ultimate superheroes, and who knows how many other incarnations of characters depending on who dies and who the publishers decide to bring back from the dead somehow, and.......... multi-verses. the melding of the movie industry and the comic industry seems pretty natural to me

Peven wrote:you know, people talk about the movie industry having no originality and accuse it of just reusing and rehashing the same movies/ideas over and over.....but can they even compare to the comic industry on that plane? how many different versions of Hulk ARE there, for instance. there are the "regular" superheroes, then there are the Ultimate superheroes, and who knows how many other incarnations of characters depending on who dies and who the publishers decide to bring back from the dead somehow, and.......... multi-verses. the melding of the movie industry and the comic industry seems pretty natural to me

The big two are, by their very nature, destined to perpetually rip themselves off. They only have small number of absolutely bankable characters. When something new comes along, it dies off rather quickly. I mean, DC fans (myself included) are getting excited because PAUL FUCKING LEVITZ is returning to write the Legion of Super Heroes. The dude hasn't written them in, what, 20 years maybe? The Big Two make money off of rebooting, reimagining, and just plain going back to the same old well.

Laura Hudson wrote:ComicsAlliance: In "Return of Bruce Wayne" we're going to see Batman starting his life over in variety of different time periods. How does it affect the legend of Batman to move its origins back in time?

Grant Morrison: For me, the time thing is to take Bruce Wayne to the limit of what he is as a character, because he's thrown back into prehistory with no memory and no uniform and no tools apart from the fact that he's got his belt. I like of the idea of exploring Batman with this time travel story, but to do it quite convincingly and realistically so that he's really at the edges of what Batman can possibly be. I wanted to see him survive out there, and expose him to these challenges through history that would allow us to watch Batman being born from nothing, basically, from this amnesiac man. I kind of explored him psychologically in "[Batman] R.I.P."; I broke him down and deconstructed him, and this is really about putting Batman back together again, but in a sequence of what will hopefully be pretty cool one-off stories, with each set in a different time and with a different genre feeling to it.

CA: It's interesting that on level you're dealing with the idea of the immortality of the Batman legend, but at the same time, a lot of this is designed to reveal more about Bruce Wayne as a man.

GM: Really, he's kind of stripped naked – though we don't actually get to see him naked. [laughs] He's down to the absolutely bare basics.

CA: We'll be seeing Bruce Wayne in prehistoric times, the Pilgrim era, on the high seas, in the Wild West, and in a 1950s noir story. Why did you choose these particular time periods and places?

GM: Firstly, I had to select something that could have happened conceivably around the area Gotham City. When I first started I had the caveman one, and then I really wanted to do gladiator Batman; that was a story I was so excited about – Batman racing across the Forum in Ancient Rome. But then I realized that he can't really do that. He can only jump around [time] in his own area, and that allowed me to tie it into the history of Batman's family... It allowed me to deal with a very specific space that we know to be Batman's. So he starts off in the caveman era and you get to see the actual Batcave as it was then, this kind of place initiation for tribesmen. In the Puritan days, it was a hideout for a girl who was accused of being a witch, and so on through the different time periods... Each of them also has their own distinct atmosphere and genre.

CA: So you've got the Batcave appearing in different time periods; are we going to see any members of his rogue's gallery also appearing through time?

GM: These are people who lived in Gotham, so you might get to see families – Commissioner Gordon's family or Catwoman's family.

CA: You mention your development of the Wayne family history as well. There was Silas Wayne from the '50s, Patrick and Kenneth from a prose piece in an issue of "Batman Chronicles" -- how much research did you do, and how much of that did you draw from?GM: I basically researched all of it, and then once I'd written it down I discovered a completely different and contradictory version, as usual with these things. So I had to combine the two into one. One version says that Wayne Manor was built in 1855, and the other version says that it was built in 1799, so I kind of fudged that. But I had to read through all of that stuff, and there's so much of it. So many little throwaway things in these stories that you've never heard that might relate to the history of the family.

CA: You've called "Return of Bruce Wayne" the latest chapter in your definitive Batman tale; do you know what the last chapter is going to be?

GM: Oh yeah. It's really good, yes. I'm so excited, but I can't say anything about it. The idea for that came to me a few months ago, and it was really quite exciting. I know exactly how it is going to end up.

CA: Just a few months ago? That recently?

GM: Well, I didn't really think I'd be back after "Return of Bruce Wayne." I was sure the whole thing would just go back to the kind of classic Batman status quo at that point. And I came up with an idea for how we could develop it in a completely different direction, that kind of did something new to the basic Batman concept. So I had to stay on.

CA: I know at one point you'd intended Damian to die – how much of what we're seeing now is what you originally envisioned for the overarching Batman story, and how much of it has evolved in the process of writing?GM: Well, one of the first ideas I had was "Batman R.I.P." when I got the "Batman" job back in 2005... all that stuff was there to begin with, the whole Dr. Hurt plotline and Black Glove plotline were there. And as it progressed, as with most of these things, when you get into the work and you start to understand the things that you're doing, it takes on a life of its own and starts to expand. There are certain things that seem to make sense at the time like making Damian a little bastard and killing him off, but then everyone felt sorry for him. And suddenly [killing him] didn't seem like such a great idea, because he was potentially such a great character, and I'm glad I didn't.

CA: So with Batman coming back, what's that going to mean for Dick Grayson? After you've been Batman, what else can you do that isn't a demotion? Where do you go from there?

GM: This is the big launch after "The Return of Bruce Wayne," so I don't want to say too much, but it's a completely new take on the Batman status quo. It's like that scene where Damian asks, what happens when Bruce Wayne comes back? We don't get to be Batman and Robin? Because I felt, and I think readers felt that they were really cool as Batman and Robin, and you don't want to lose them straightaway. So you'll see what happens.

CA: A lot of your work revolves around high concept themes; is there a particular theme that you're working with in "Return of Bruce Wayne" specifically? GM: Each strand of it takes a slightly different approach, and looking back on "Batman and Robin," I can see there's a very interesting progression where the first story that came out is about masks, and the second story is about faces, and the third story is about bones, and the fourth story is about family history. It's kind of delving into the meat of Batman. I wasn't aware that I was doing it, but now it's so clear that each story peels back another layer of what Batman is. It all ties into that – the idea of the man in the mask, and the fact that I want to bring Bruce Wayne and Batman together again as a person, rather than the idea that Bruce is a decoy and Batman is the real person. I wanted to bring back Bruce as a living, breathing person.

Someone who's as well trained as Batman, who has studied meditation and all these disciplines, really wouldn't just be a tough guy. There's a lot more to him. Batman is a person who has seen a lot of really dark stuff and dealt with it. He's not a one-note character. He's got a lot more context to understand the world, but he's driven by the mission – that's the child part of him that he can't quiet. So as smart as he is, I think he wouldn't know what to do if he didn't keep doing what he does.

CA: And that's true no matter what context you put him in.

GM: It just shows that deep inside, behind the costume, behind everything, there's this highly moral man who will not let bullies have their way. And that is constantly reinforced; each story [in "Return of Bruce Wayne"] is a different take on the idea of bad people and good people and villains and black and white. Actually now that you mention it, the stories are a bit – they kinda put him up against morally ambiguous situations rather than clear black and white ones.

CA: After you finish this overarching Batman story that you've been working on, is that it for you in the world of Batman, or do hold out the possibility that you could come back again?

GM: I didn't ever think I would do Batman again after "Arkham Asylum." You never know when a good story idea will come up. But when this one comes to its conclusion I think I'll have covered so many of the basics of what Batman means to me, it'd be hard to imagine there'd be much left to say.

CA: Do you actually have a pithy statement about what Batman means to you?

GM: Well, it's taken me 6 years to work it out through the book. [laughs] By the end of the whole thing I'm sure I'll have a lovely one-liner, but right now I'm still discovering. I love the fact that you can delve into a fictional character like this and get so much depth and so much history. He's kind of alive. He's been around longer than me and he'll be around when I'm long gone, so he's kind of more real than me.

CA: That's a theme that we've seen a lot in your work, and it seems like we're seeing it acted out in a literal way in "Return of Bruce Wayne" – the idea that this character, this legend is immortal.

GM: The great thing about comics is that they can act out big psychological struggles or human dramas but on a kind of cosmic or epic stage. The best comics are the ones that ultimately talk about what it's like to be people, but they express it the way that dreams express it: as big symbols.

CA: Do you see "Return of Bruce Wayne" as the new Batman origin story?

GM: To a certain extent, it's almost replacing the death of his parents. That's never going to go away, but this is giving him something else where Batman grows naturally and spontaneously out of something else after the death of his parents... That's what I like about it – the idea that Bruce Wayne just becomes Batman. You can't stop him becoming it.

It's coming along well. I'm writing it at the back end of everything else. I want it to be the best thing I've ever done, so I've been taking my time with the issues. But yes, it's progressing well. You'll see it probably Summer 2011.

David Uzumeri wrote:Our Batman Incorporated annotations are back, this time taking a look at the incredibly dense and referential fourth issue. Not only does this issue feature writer Grant Morrison's new origin of the original Golden Age Batwoman, an appearance by the new Batwoman, and stunning art from Chris Burnham with coloring from Nathan Fairbairn, but it also inspired a new crazy theory on my part. If you were entertained during Batman R.I.P. watching me proven wrong about whether Alfred was the Black Glove, then you'll want to read these annotations, since I've got a whole new drum to beat involving Joe Chill's son.

Last edited by TheButcher on Thu Apr 28, 2011 6:21 am, edited 1 time in total.